20 new career guidance and counselling centres to provide services to additional 7000 unemployed

activation of employment caravans to include additional 5000 unemployed in distant areas

labour market training for additional 5400 unemployed and

80 new self-service stations.

Beneficiary

National Employment Service (NES)+ Local NES offices + Local self-governments+

Department of employment, Ministry of Labour, Employment, Veteran and Social Affairs

Partners

National Employment Service, Republic of Serbia

Summary of the project

The Direct Grant was signed before the accompanying Technical assistance that would have helped in the management of the Grant was contracted. That led to the following negative impact:

No appropriate management structure was established in NES before the start of the Grant (initially the IPA planning document required TA support to start at least 6 months before the Grant; unfortunately the TA contract is still not signed, while the renewed tender procedure is unnecessarily prolonged (despite the procedure was launched on time and immediately after the cancellation of the previous procedure short listing continued from March to June, 2014; evaluation is ongoing since beginning of August, 2014 and F&C have not indicated clear date for its completion). Thus the needed technical assistance before the start of grant activities, would not only start after the Grant is signed, but it would come approximately one year after the start of the Grant implementation!

The Grant implementation requires very specific procurement knowledge following PRAG procedures, which is non-existent in NES at the moment. EUD organised through CFCU procurement training for NES staff but it didn't prove sufficient for NES to launch the tender procedures required under the Grant.

In the course of Grant preparation, NES general director changed three times, which inevitably affected the speed, motivation and vision of the institution with regard to Grant implementation.

Above factors led to a situation that after the signature of the Grant in the end of April, 2014 until today NES has not implemented much activity under the project. For that reason the program is also supposed for inclusion in the assistance "bottleneck table" from September, 2014

Programme/Project objectives

The overall objective is to promote further socio-economic development in Serbia based on higher levels of employment, a more educated and employable labour force and enhanced social inclusion of people from disadvantaged groups, with a particular emphasis on Roma.

Specific objectives

The specific objective to be met by the end of the execution period is “to increase the effectiveness of employment policies toward disadvantaged groups”.